


Obligations

by mylucidskin (alyelle)



Category: Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-01
Updated: 2011-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-26 18:07:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyelle/pseuds/mylucidskin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felix performs the obligation d'áme</p>
            </blockquote>





	Obligations

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Melusine and The Virtu. Still dedicated to [Anna](http://daisakura.livejournal.com/), with as much love as there ever was. Originally written in 2007; also archived on [Dreamwidth](http://stowaway.dreamwidth.org/20234.html). If you have open id, please consider leaving your thoughts/kudos there.

**Mildmay**

  
There's this old saying in the stories, about life and death situations and your life flashing before you. I'd never thought much on it, and I'd sure as Hell never had it happen, not even on the worst of Keeper's jobs. So I got no way of knowing if it's really all pictures and feelings and what-not, like they say, same as I got no way of telling if it really has to be life or death, or just something near enough. What I do know is that when I felt that binding-by-forms take hold of me, that's about what happened. It wasn't that it hurt – least not physically anyways, just more like falling down that hole you didn't see, or having some freak storm sneak up on you on one of them stinking days in mid-Thermidor, when everything's dry as old bones. But the second he kissed me, the flashing started just as quick as you please. Not my whole life, nothing like that. Just bits of it, all broken pieces and thoughts and feelings, and they came and went and didn't show no signs of being done anytime soon neither.

_So this was what a Pharaohlight whore is like._

That stupid thought was there without no warning, just popped up in between pictures of me hanging from a rooftop, back when I wasn't much more than a septad and three, and the thick grey fog I'd stared into every morning on board the _White Otter_. And then it's gone, and I find myself thinking about what we're doing, really thinking, and… powers, about whether he'd be so bad after all.

So that's how we were, him and his hocus rituals I knew next to nothing about, and me with a head full of memories and thoughts, and things that didn't make no sense, and Keeper's voice saying "Going moll, Milly-Fox?" the way she’d done. I didn't know what to do, wasn't thinking nothing about why or how, but I got a good idea that I was pushing at him, trying to clear my head and just think for a minute. Except then I hear this whimpering sound, like a dog that's been kicked one too many times and is just begging for someone to care. And I know it's Felix making it. I dunno how I managed to look at him, but powers when I did – it was in his eyes, like he'd known what was coming, known what I'd do and how badly he'd feel, but just couldn't help it none. I ain't no poet, but seeing that – this was pure fucking heartbreak I was watching, and next thing I know, I've grabbed him back, him and his sobs and whimpers and hands all over me, soft like a baby's and a septad times cleaner than I could ever hope to have. And Kethe help me, I kissed him again.

If I’d thought that obligation d’âme had been something before, it didn’t compare none to what happened then. Second I touched him, those images started again, in behind my eyes, and kept coming faster and faster. Felix following his shining people in Nera, and me following after him like I got nothing better to do; him in that damn cabin on board _Morskaiakrov_ , and me praying to all the saints and powers I could think of we’d make it out alive; him smiling that half-smile at me – and not the one he used to get something he wanted, neither. The real one, where his whole face lit up and he looked… happy. And the whole time I can feel his magic working, less like falling now, and more like a hot wind winding round us and eating up all the air. And Felix is clinging onto me, digging in his fingers the way he did down the Sim, all limpet-like and just as breathless and hard, and right about then I realised that even without the binding-by-forms, I’d have done whatever he asked. Because he was my brother, and we were all we really had left, and – Kethe, Milly-Fox – because I loved him. And suddenly I heard his voice in my head, clear as a Troian sunrise, saying what he’d said about half a lifetime ago: _Maybe I wouldn’t have to take, if you’d give a little more_.

Even with all them voices, and the wind rushing round, and Felix digging holes into me, I s’pose I should’ve stopped when I heard that. But powers, I couldn’t. All there was by then was him and me, and the bed somehow underneath us, and his voice over and over in my head, and him making those little whimpers underneath me, kissing me and crying all at once. And even if I was any good with words, I ain’t got none for what came next.

 

  


**Felix**   


  
There was a moment, brief but definite, when I could have told him what the obligation d’âme involved. Where I could have spelled out just what I’d have to do, and that, while I was going about it the best way I could for his sake, he still wouldn’t like it.

I didn’t, of course. In all honesty, I don’t think I ever would have, despite my brain frantically beating to a rhythm of _you owe this to him, at the very least_. When he looked at me, when he met my eyes and said he was sure, there ceased to be room in my head for any rational thought. Especially thought that involved words and logic.

“May we both be forgiven for this.” _Especially me_. “Give me your hands.”

His hesitation was barely noticeable, and if he shook, it was no more than I would have. Probably less, in fact. Absently, I ran my thumb over the faded scars on his palms. I almost fled the room when I realised what I was doing. _Enough_ , I told myself. The venom in the thought was calculated, stinging me back to the reality of what I was about to do. Ethically, it would have been better to refuse. What Mildmay had asked amounted to gross heresy, and left my limbs unwilling to move, as though dosed with laudanum. Even if a legal technicality left me unaccountable, I was at this moment little better than Malkar. His mark was stamped on me; this, more than anything, marked me as his creature.

My hands clenched involuntarily around Mildmay’s. I could feel my heart thumping, entirely too fast and too loudly, even accounting for my fear and the adrenaline rush that accompanied Cabaline workings. I vaguely wondered that he didn’t flinch at it; he surely must have felt it pulsing through my grip. Bowing my head, more out of shame than any reverence or necessity, I began to murmur the words that would begin the binding. Mildmay inclined his head likewise.

It took every thread of willpower, every ounce of determination and arrogance I possessed, not to turn and run. Somehow the fact that he was letting me, that he had _asked_ for this, only made it worse. Standing before me, bowing like that, he was nothing more than a sacrifice, to be pitied and wept over, and ultimately forgotten. I remembered what I had said to him, the closest truth I ever willingly gave. _I am not a nice person_. Forcing myself to stop wondering how I ended up with a brother I clearly didn’t deserve, I finished the recitation and looked up.

He followed suit. And before he even had time to _think_ to ask what was happening next, I kissed him.

It was at once everything and nothing like what I’d tried not to imagine. He hadn’t expected it, that was certain. Excellent powers of observation, Felix. I’d have sneered at myself if I hadn’t been preoccupied; of course he hadn’t expected it. Mildmay – my _brother_ , I tried desperately to remind myself, through the taste of gin on his tongue and the pressure of his hands on my shoulders – was annemer, and consequently had no idea what was really involved in the obligation d’âme. His surprise at what I was doing could only be matched by my own at him. He had not yet pushed me away.

Even as I thought it he pulled back, and as I breathed in air that wasn’t his, I could not stop a small sob escaping my throat. I had gotten what I wanted, and at what cost? If I hadn’t disgusted him before, I must have by now. My Pharaohlight habits came back in a rush; I screwed my eyes shut and bit on my bottom lip, trying to calm my breathing.

It hadn’t worked then, and it didn’t now. The tiny, choked noises were escaping faster, and I was entirely certain that if I didn’t turn and walk away right then, I’d lay to ruin every gentlemanly habit that I’d had drummed into me. I was probably this side of a breath away from doing just that.

And then he was kissing me. Willingly, of his own volition, my brother, my _Mildmay_ , was kissing me. With his hands holding me firmly in place, and his tongue doing I-don’t-know-what. Assuming I could have thought at all at that point, I wasn’t going to waste time wondering who he’d practiced it on before me. I just thanked whoever those powers and saints were that he always swore by, and kissed him back.

Shannon always said I was not an emotional person. He was wrong; I am quite capable of feeling deep emotions if I allow myself. The fact that I do not show it is, to a large extent, a self-fulfilling prophecy of the company I kept. Malkar had taught me to abhor emotion in others and to prevent my own from showing at all; Shannon had always been so ready to throw a tantrum that I could not have been anything other than cold. Do not mistake me; he did not want sympathy, he was merely spoiled. All Shannon had ever wanted was his own way and all eyes on him.

Shannon and I were quite alike in that respect.

Mildmay was unlike either of them. Taciturn, yes, but he felt deeply, and showed it in a hundred little ways I had not known I could recognise. His breath, normally so focussed, was coming in little hitches, a weird counterpoint to my own. He pulled me closer while pushing me backwards, and at that moment I could not have recognised up from down. The shock, fatigue from the casting, and more than anything the stomach-churning elation that flew through me was all at once too much; I felt the bed behind me, and my knees buckled. Scrambling for any kind of purchase, my fingers hooked the top of his cotton trousers.

It occurred to me, as we lay for a moment with dead silence pressing down, what a sight I must have looked for anyone who had known me in the Mirador. The act itself was nothing new, but I was thoroughly more dishevelled than a nobleman would ever have admitted to. My hair was in disarray, I could feel a blush staining my skin, and I was flat on my back beneath not just _a_ man, but a man who could reasonably pass as my twin. A man I desired, sickeningly, above all else in life. A man whose trousers I still had my fingers half-down.

I froze beneath him, feeling glass needles in my heart as his words of earlier drifted into my thoughts. _If I got to leave you, then I don’t know why I should bother to stay alive._ I desperately, painfully hoped he’d meant it, all the while hoping that he hadn’t and he would run as far from me as humanly possible. All I would ever give him was cruelty if he cared, and spiteful retorts when he opened up to me. It was all I had given him so far; there was no reason for the obligation d’âme to change that fact. Nor would it.

In the eye-blink space it took for those thoughts to assail me, Mildmay had propped himself up on an elbow. His eyes bore into mine, questions and uncertainty darkening the green, reminding me unbearably of the forests of the Khloïdanikos. I bit on my lip, hard enough to draw blood this time, again scrunching my eyes shut. Had he not brushed a strand of hair from my face – tentatively, I noted, for his fingertips trembled slightly when they met my skin – I would have kept them that way. Instead, I felt them fly open of their own accord as quickly as I had closed them.

He watched me still, and for a languorous moment did nothing, seeming to have recovered his usual mask of calm. Then something in his eyes flickered, so slightly that had I not been staring into them as though facing grim death itself, I would never have noticed. He traced his finger along my jaw line gently, with a softness I rarely remembered to attribute to him. And I knew what would come next, had seen that flicker before in the eyes of countless customers, nameless men who only mattered until Keeper was paid. I wanted to weep; I knew I should not take this from him too, yet had neither strength nor willpower left to refuse him. Rather, I pulled him down, and held on as though he was once more all that stood between me and the brackish water of the Sim.

And I prayed again that we would both be forgiven for this night.


End file.
